00:09:32.480Before we start telling the story of what happened last year at Coots and Milk River,
00:09:36.640can you tell us who you are and what kind of a guy you were before all this nonsense started
00:09:43.280okay uh yeah i'm a 37 year old uh father i got a daughter that's 15 and a son that's nine
00:09:50.520i live in central alberta uh i work in the oil field i have been for 18 plus years
00:09:56.620um i'm a hard-working guy i'm self-taught in a lot of many different ways and uh yeah
00:10:06.640Would you say you're just an average guy, got a lot of buddies, you're a good dad, you know, you're just a regular good fella?
00:10:15.540That's right. I mean, most of my friends I've met in this freedom movement, and, you know, I had a few beforehand, but now the love and support is overwhelming.
00:10:26.240Let me ask how this has been for you when the vaccine passports came in and all of the nonsense started happening.
00:10:34.320did you know immediately there was a problem or did it take you a while to figure things out
00:10:39.320i think it was like everybody kind of had to adjust see what was going on kind of thing see
00:10:46.020kind of how it was affecting them personally before they could make a decision yeah i base
00:10:51.880a lot of my stuff on facts i don't go off of you know he said she said i like to try and
00:10:58.860figure out if it's true or not so i mean when it came to the vaccines and stuff but when it started
00:11:04.620affecting me was when i chose not to get the vaccine i chose to not get it and when i was
00:11:13.380being affected not being able to go into restaurants grocery stores hospitals you know
00:11:18.260even schools my kids were coming home all the time with masks on and everything else
00:11:21.940it just didn't feel right what does your family feel about this have you have you lost people
00:11:28.040along the way friends and family uh that's a good question so a lot of my family is vaccinated
00:11:37.400i wouldn't say i've lost them i would say they have different views in mind some of them not
00:11:42.620all of them um i wouldn't say they hate me that's not the case it just like anybody else everybody's
00:11:50.820got their certain views towards things and i i can i could appreciate that when you decided
00:11:57.540to go down to coots what was the reaction like from your family did you go by yourself or did
00:12:04.640you bring them with you no i went down by myself and in a convoy uh my family was very skeptical
00:12:10.860about it they didn't really want me to get involved in it just kind of step back for a bit
00:15:51.980I mean, there was days out there that I was shaking hands with police officers on the front lines.
00:15:58.100I know many, many different conversations.
00:16:01.780valentine's day kids handed out roses to many of the officers you know i i watched them break down
00:16:09.260it was it was a beautiful thing and then yeah how many officers were down there james
00:16:15.920front lines well okay so there was there was 300 officers deployed for milk river and coots
00:16:24.060overall um how many were on each day i couldn't tell you exactly um in the court they said that
00:16:33.200there was 14 different checkpoints that they had manned were they mingling with the crowds like
00:16:42.820you you'd mentioned that you saw a lot of camaraderie almost between the people who
00:16:47.340were down there protesting and and the uh and the police was the mood good for the most part
00:16:53.300yeah the mood was good now i i couldn't tell you if they were putting on a show or not
00:16:59.400but for me it felt good i mean it was nice to see them interacting i mean they wouldn't come in
00:17:05.860right into the center of our things and eat meals with us but there was many times that a few of
00:17:11.500them would come in and you know kind of drop the the law enforcement mentality and you know visit
00:17:19.160with us there there was a few that did that there is the one legendary video i think many people who
00:17:24.260are watching the show right now saw where a couple of the officers come in actually more than a
00:17:28.720couple but one is the spokesperson he becomes more and more frustrated as time goes on during this
00:17:34.560conversation based upon the fact that uh many of the truckers and the people down there who were
00:17:39.280involved in the blockade were not willing to move their vehicles and he started making threats i'm
00:17:44.200going to assume this is towards the end of the blockade down there uh but it seemed a very
00:17:50.920aggressive move to make and it almost looked like a couple of his officer associates needed to calm
00:17:57.380him down a little bit because things were getting heated did you see that video um i did see that
00:18:03.380video i think that was right down at coots yeah that was right by the u.s and canadian border i
00:18:09.380was a little bit farther north than that uh they were trying to just keep us peaceful from going
00:18:15.700down there i believe but yeah there was a lot of a lot of pushback from the rcmp uh down at
00:18:23.620right at the coots border when did they was there a time they started becoming aggressive
00:18:31.220um yeah i know two trucks beside me the one day there they ripped open the door of one semi and
00:18:38.020ripped the driver out assuming that there was firearms in there um they searched the whole
00:18:43.020truck and found nothing it was just an assumption they had um that was kind of a little different
00:18:50.180and then uh i'm sure you've heard of the story of the excavators that were parked on the farm
00:18:55.220and uh was this the gun planting or was this the sabotaging of the sabotaging of okay yeah
00:19:04.920Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead and tell that. Like, this is all alleged. Obviously, we're not actually sitting here saying this really happened unless we actually have eyewitnesses. But we are saying this is absolutely alleged to have happened. So please continue.
00:19:16.520yeah so yeah the excavators were parked in the farm field by the highway they weren't on the
00:19:22.640highway and the officers took it as a threat and asked the owner to move them off the highway so
00:19:28.440the owner did the owner actually tracked them across the field and put them on the private
00:19:32.200property and uh yeah in the middle of the night they went over there and they cut fuel lines they
00:19:38.160cut the ecm computers out of them cut off hydraulic hoses uh filled fuel lines full of spray foam
00:19:45.260insulation um and and they admitted to it they admitted to it they admitted to it yes
00:19:53.560i have yet to see that is that on video somewhere or is that in a court there is
00:19:59.340there is some videos going around but there is it's in evidence as well
00:20:03.820has it been presented yet or is it still awaiting trial that particular instance because that's
00:20:10.500still waiting okay that trial's still waiting i believe they're set for sometime in june i believe
00:20:16.340i can't confirm that but okay we're going to get to june in a second because that's when your
00:20:20.900pre-sentence is is uh scheduled for but what about the woman who had police come into her home and
00:20:28.040plant weapons did you ever meet her yes i did that's joanne pearson okay she's an awesome lady1.00
00:20:34.060she was down at coots she was doing all the truckers laundry um food taking care of them0.93
00:20:40.580you know yeah offering her shower to anybody that needed one um she had she had nothing but heart
00:20:47.900she was an amazing lady she has video of police uh coming into her home and planting weapons
00:20:54.400uh i haven't seen the videos personally but yes that's that's what she says yeah uh also uh clay
00:21:03.940farnsworth of police on guard was on uh the show a couple of weeks ago and he suggested the video
00:21:08.840is there uh they're still awaiting uh their chance to see it so they can go through all of it and
00:21:15.600confirm that it is real it hasn't been tampered with and they can uh even go forward and identify
00:21:20.720some of the officers who were in there apparently they were laughing at joanne and suggesting that
00:21:26.580she's going to be up on gun charges herself she has testified to that uh publicly as well so let's
00:21:32.380talk about what happened to you james as you were leaving you got it you got a call to leave you had
00:21:37.680to go back to work right that's correct yeah february 14th uh it was valentine's day um i
00:21:44.000spent the morning there um i cried that morning watching the kids go around with roses handing
00:21:49.320them out to many different people and uh i had gotten a call as well to go to work um i had
00:21:56.360i felt like i did my time there what i could i mean i was just sitting there i was honking my
00:22:02.160horn and i wasn't really doing a whole lot more so i felt it was my time to leave i uh
00:22:09.200yeah i packed up my truck i made my way out of the protest and uh yeah as i
00:22:17.140got out about two kilometers away i seen a check stop um i pulled over and uh
00:22:28.420i guess i could talk about it now so in trial the police officer testified to use a laser to
00:22:36.100measure the distance where i had stopped was 351 meters that's where i decided to do my pre-trip
00:22:42.060and log books before i go through because i was afraid of getting pulled over and getting a fine
00:22:47.120for it so once i finished my pre-trip and log books i decided okay it's time to go i accelerated
00:22:55.900the truck and went towards this checkpoint an officer was sitting inside of his car
00:23:01.660as i got closer he finally got out and stood beside his door and he did a waving hand gesture
00:23:08.080had you seen this officer before james did you recognize it okay never met him before
00:23:13.860and um i want to say too so during the court thing um during the testimony he testified that
00:23:22.040he did make a hand gesture but he couldn't remember what what kind of hand gesture it was
00:23:26.260um i made this hand gesture in court and he never denied it so i want to make that clear okay um
00:23:36.120so once i seen that hand gesture i took it as a sign of goodbye you know i i figured they were
00:23:42.380happy people were leaving the protest it's time to go you know so i continued on my way and as i
00:23:50.020was passing him i managed to hit a pylon i was about three feet away from the back of his car
00:23:56.200with my front tire and middle of february hard plastic it just disintegrated exploded
00:24:03.440and obviously it scared him and went from there they turned their lights on and
00:24:11.120hunted me down i pulled over i got out of the truck and i went down on my hands and knees
00:24:17.620and you pulled over right away like you didn't even hesitate in pulling over you just went whoa
00:24:23.540okay okay fair enough so you weren't resisting the lights no as soon as i seen the lights i
00:24:30.280pulled over uh i never i was never vulgar with them i never retaliated anything i was very
00:24:36.320cooperative the whole time and okay so you you came out of your truck you go down on your hands
00:24:42.100and knees immediately on the ground or just on your knees with your like that just on my knees
00:24:47.300with my hands up okay and uh the officers got out of their cars with their guns pointing at me
00:24:53.540and from there i was arrested they had their guns out yeah how many of them were there
00:25:01.980uh one at first and then it ended up being three of them and were they vulgar with you
00:25:08.460were they cursing at you were they no they weren't really cursing or anything they were
00:25:14.720saying you know you were trying to run over a police officer we we don't know what you're
00:25:21.520doing or what you have and all this and i asked them you know why are you pointing your guns at
00:25:26.200me yeah they were scared apparently did you tell them you were unarmed oh yeah i was unarmed i was
00:25:35.620already on the ground on my knees okay but did you tell them that though like i i don't have a gun on
00:25:40.120me man like i'm unarmed i'm just look at me i'm in a position of surrender here you're not fighting
00:25:45.580back okay so what happened then they cuff you they throw you in the back of the car they take you in
00:25:50.580they took me in yeah so uh they never did seize the truck they uh one of the officers jumped into
00:25:59.500the driver's seat and drove it into the town of milk river and hid it behind some grain silos
00:26:06.440left the lights on, locked the doors, and abandoned it.
00:55:01.720That's what I was talking about. That liberal MP was just spouting talking points and badly at that without really knowing what the words she was saying actually meant.
00:55:15.740This is what passes for our parliament, my friends. It's kind of sad.
00:55:20.940hey look at this since cocaine has been and other hard drugs in british columbia have been
00:55:27.060decriminalized there's a record high overdose call in that province according to tnc.news
00:55:34.840bc emergency health services received a record number of drug overdose calls last week in an
00:55:41.060email to ctv bcehs said wednesday march 22nd said bc's new record for the number of overdose calls
01:06:31.720As it prepares to ramp up production at the world's largest edible cricket production facility in London, Ontario,
01:06:39.140Aspire Food Group is already in talks to open a second site.
01:06:43.720Look, my friends, people have been saying, oh, I want to get out and protest.
01:06:47.660Let's protest something different because we keep protesting the same things all the time.
01:06:51.480We're showing up at legislatures. We're showing up at media outlets, branch media outlets that really don't have much to do with the media outlet at all.
01:07:00.780You know, you can go ahead and protest all you want at the CBC or CTV in Calgary or Edmonton.
01:07:05.860It doesn't matter. What you got to do is go to Toronto if you want to make an impact on them at all.
01:07:10.900that's where their head offices are right and the same thing goes for legislatures there's no point
01:07:17.140in protesting at a legislature unless you're going to distract them and if there's nobody there on a
01:07:22.280saturday and there isn't because they're government workers and no government worker works on saturdays
01:07:26.520not even politicians going to a legislature on a saturday or sunday is absolutely useless
01:07:31.820what about what about going to one of these cricket facilities and protesting there let's
01:07:40.080got a huge gathering at this cricket facility in london ontario or maybe just maybe now that
01:07:46.720massive pfizer plant in brandon manitoba you know people ask me all the time hey what's what's the
01:07:53.980deal with brandon man how come nobody does anything in brandon we hear all this activity
01:07:59.280in winkler and altona and some of it in winnipeg and i say well you know what i mean there are some
01:08:05.440people doing some things in Brandon, but for the most part, you're right, Brandon's been pretty
01:08:09.740quiet. Well, there's a guy now, Rick from The Shed, who's a weed distributor, legal one,
01:08:20.260operates a legal business, in Brandon, who is now starting to speak out against the 15-Minute
01:08:26.020City program that Brandon City Council is trying to bring in. So we may, in fact, get something
01:08:32.140going in Brandon soon, and if we do, wouldn't it be cool to maybe gather a few hundred people
01:08:37.660outside the entrance of that Pfizer plant and say, you guys lied to us.
01:08:46.280Anyway, according to a recent interview, Aspire Food Group co-founder Mohammed Ashur said he's
01:08:53.360talking to interested investors and customers about a second facility. Wow, business must be
01:13:26.740It's about five or six videos down from the top.
01:13:31.920He's talking to Eva Vlanderkloeken and another guy about what's really going on in the Netherlands right now regarding the French farmland.
01:13:41.000It's fascinating. Fascinating. So go check that one out.
01:13:45.360The Europeans really know how to protest, my friends. That was my point.
01:13:50.520And Canadians, I think we have a lot to learn.
01:13:53.800And we can learn a lot by watching the Europeans do it because they've been doing it for a while.